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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (701715)	2/28/2013 4:12:29 PM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575535

"The prefatory clause “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” merely announces a purpose. It does not limit or expand the scope of the operative clause “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms. The militia consisted of all males capable of acting together for the common defense. The Antifederalists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in order to disable citizen militias, thereby enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule. The Antifederalists therefore sought to preserve the citizens’ militia by denying Congress the power to abridge the right of individuals to keep and bear arms. This interpretation is confirmed by analogous arms-bearing rights adopted in state constitutions immediately preceding and following the Second Amendment. Furthermore, the drafting history reveals three proposals that unequivocally referred to an individual right to bear arms. Interpretation of the Second Amendment by scholars, courts, and legislators from ratification through the late 19th century also supports the Court’s interpretation. No precedent forecloses this interpretation. United States v. Miller limits the type of weapons to which the right applies to those in common use for lawful purposes, but does not limit the right to keep and bear arms to militia purposes. The Second Amendment right is not a right to keep and carry any weapon in any manner and for any purpose. The Court has upheld gun control legislation including prohibitions on concealed weapons and possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, and laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. The historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons supports the holding in United States v. Miller that the sorts of weapons protected are those in common use at the time."